Lecture Notes:
The general election of 1945

(health warning:
these are notes, not the definitive text on the subject!)

Why was the general election
called when it was called?

Late in 1944, Churchill had said that he
believed it would be wrong to prolong the current Parliament any longer
after the defeat of Germany than was absolutely necessary.

"The prolongation of the life of the
existing Parliament by another two or three years would be a very serious
constitutional lapse. Even now no one under thirty has ever cast a vote
at a General election, or even at a by-election, since the registers fell
out of action at the beginning of the war. Therefore it seems to me that
unless all political parties resolve to maintain the present Coalition
until the Japanese are defeated we must look to the termination of the
war against Nazism as a pointer which will fix the date of the General
Election."

Most Conservatives favoured such an early
election. However, when the end of the war with Germany (8 May 1944) actually
came, Churchill wanted the Coalition government to continue until the war
with Japan had been won, and indeed he proposed this to the Labour and
Liberal parties. Churchill wrote to Attlee: " It would give me
great relief if you and your friends were found resolved to carry on with
me until a decisive victory has been gained over Japan " (quoted
CHARLOT 166) Many Labour ministers in the Coalition were inclined to accept
(Attlee, Bevin, Dalton, though not MorrisonÉ). It was believed that
it would take at least six months, if not more, to defeat Japan. (Churchill
knew by then that the Allies possessed a new weapon in the Atom bomb, though
of course this was top secret and no-one else, not even Attlee, had been
told. Nobody really knew quite how destructive this new weapon of mass
destruction actually was. The bitter resistance which Japanese forces had
put up against US troops Òisland-hoppingÓ towards the Japanese
mainland suggested the struggle would be protracted and hard.) However,
the Labour party as a whole wanted a general election sooner than that:
the question was put to the Labour party conference on 20 May 1945 and
was overwhelmingly rejected. Attlee wrote to Churchill (May 21 1945):

My dear Churchill,

. . It is precisely on the problems of
the reconstruction of the economic life of the country that party differences
are most acute. What is required is decisive action. This can only be forthcoming
from a Government united on principle and policy. A Government so divided
that it could take no effective action would be a disaster to the country.

My colleagues and I do not believe that
it would be possible to lay aside political controversy now that the expectation
of an election has engaged the attention of the country.

Attlee wanted an election in October, arguing
that it would be impossible to compile a sufficiently accurate register
if the election was held any earlier.He was probably also influenced by
the feeling that an early election would allow the Conservatives to benefit
from Churchill's prestigious position as war leader, just as Lloyd George
had done after the First World War at which Lloyd George gave 'coupons',
i.e. letters of personal recommendation, to a number of candidates. Another
precedent was what became known as the khaki election of 1900, at which
the Conservatives were triumphantly elected as the 'patriotic party' in
the Boer War. Indeed Churchill even tried to raise the ban on candidates
wearing military uniform during the campaign.

Churchill, who almost certainly saw himself
as the leader of a peace-time coalition which would carry on after the
war along the same lines as it had done during the war, was perhaps itrritated
at seeing his plans frustrated, and called for an election much earlier
than Labour had wanted. He resigned as leader of the Coalition government
on 23 May, and agreed to form what became known as the 'Caretaker government'
from then until dissolution of Parliament on June 15. The election was
to be held on 5 July 1945. Because of the complications involved in collecting
service votes, the count would not take place until 26 July; until that
date the ballot boxes would remain sealed in police custody.

The caretaker government

None of the Labour ministers agreed to
continue, and only one Liberal. There were also a few non-political functionaries.

The election manifestos

Labour's manifesto Let Us Face the Future
(click here to read the full text) set out
comprehensive plans to Òwin the peaceÓ as their electoral
posters put it. It proposed nationalisation of the Bank of England, fuel
and power, inland transport and iron and steel. Planning would continue,
with controls on raw materials and food prices, government intervention
to maintain employment, a National Health service and social security,
and controls on the location of industry.

The Conservatives relied very much on Churchill's
personal prestige: indeed their manifesto was entitled Mr Churchill's
Declaration of Policy to the Electors(click
here to read the full text). It also included plans for post-war reconstruction
as agreed by the Coalition: employment, social security and a health service.

The election campaign

Much of the campaigning as done within
the constituencies, generally in a rather disorganised way. Many candidates
had had to return to Britain at relatively short notice. The party's electoral
machines were relatively disorganised. Labour was in a crusading mood.

The leaders of the Conservative and Labour
parties made a limited number of election broadcasts on the radio. Churchill
made two rather extreme claims in his broadcasts. The first, and most famous,
was made in his first election broadcast on June 4. He suggested that Labour
would ultimately need some kind of Gestapo to impose its socialist ideas.
The whole broadcast was a broadside against the idea of planning, and in
this he was undoubtedly influenced by Professor Friedrich von Hayek of
the LES whose book The Road to Serfdom had been published in 1944,
arguing that planning would lead to totalitarianism. Churchill said (bold
added by myself, passages of particular interest):

My friends, I must
tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom.Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good
grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of this century,
there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with
Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that
property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its
forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism.

Look how even to-day they hunger for
controls of every kind, as if these were delectable foods instead of war-time
inflictions and monstrosities. There is to be one State to which all
are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State is to be
the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler,
and the archcaucus boss.

How is an ordinary citizen or subject
of the King to stand up against this formidable machine, which, once it
is in power, will prescribe for every one of them where they are to work;
what they are to work at; where they may go and what they may say; what
views they are to hold and within what limits they may express them; where
their wives are to go to queue-up for the State ration; and what education
their children are to receive to mould their views of human liberty and
conduct in the future?

A Socialist State once thoroughly completed
in all its details and its aspects - and that is what I am speaking of
- could not afford to suffer opposition. Here in old England, in Great
Britain, of which old England forms no inconspicuous part, in this glorious
Island, the cradle and citadel of free democracy throughout the world,
we do not like to be regimented and ordered about and have every action
of our lives prescribed for us. In fact we punish criminals by sending
them to Wormwood Scrubs and Dartmoor, where they get full employment, and
whatever board and lodging is appointed by the Home Secretary.

Socialism is, in its essence, an attack
not only upon British enterprise, but upon the right of the ordinary man
or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand
clapped across their mouths and nostrils.A Free Parliament - look
at that - a Free Parliament is odious to the Socialist doctrinaire. Have
we not heard Mr. Herbert Morrison descant upon his plans to curtail Parliamentary
procedure and pass laws simply by resolutions of broad principle in the
House of Commons, afterwards to be left by Parliament to the executive
and to the bureaucrats to elaborate and enforce by departmental regulations?
As for Sir Stafford Cripps on "Parliament in the Socialist State,"
I have not time to read you what he said, but perhaps it will meet the
public eye during the election campaign.

But I will go farther. I declare to
you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established
without a political police. Many of those who are advocating Socialism
or voting Socialist to-day will be horrified at this idea. That is because
they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories
are leading them.

No Socialist Government conducting the
entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp,
or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to
fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the
first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would
stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power
to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles
above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and
no longer civil. And where would the ordinary simple folk - the common
people, as they like to call them in America - where would they be, once
this mighty organism had got them in its grip?

I stand for the sovereign freedom of
the individual within the laws which freely elected Parliaments have freely
passed. I stand for the rights of the ordinary man to say what he thinks
of the Government of the day, however powerful, and to turn them out, neck
and crop, if he thinks he can better his temper or his home thereby, and
if he can persuade enough others to vote with him.

But, you will say, look at what has
been done in the war. Have not many of those evils which you have depicted
been the constant companions of our daily life? It is quite true that the
horrors of war do not end with the fighting-line. They spread far away
to the base and the homeland, and everywhere people give up their rights
and liberties for the common cause. But this is because the life of their
country is in mortal peril, or for the sake of the cause of freedom in
some other land. They give them freely as a sacrifice. It is quite true
that the conditions of Socialism play a great part in war-time. We all
submit to being ordered about to save our country. But when the war is
over and the imminent danger to our existence is removed, we cast off these
shackles and burdens which we imposed upon ourselves in times of dire and
mortal peril, and quit the gloomy caverns of war and march out into the
breezy fields, where the sun is shining and where all may walk joyfully
in its warm and golden rays.

Churchill also made allegations that a
Labour government would in fact be controlled by the National Executive
Committe of the Labour party, and in particular by its Chairman Harold
Laski, somehow suggesting some sinister plot to take sovereignty from Parliament
and the country and place it in the hands of a little-known group of men
and women. Attlee, in short, according to this criticism, was little more
than a puppet in their hands. The accusation was groundless, but it is
difficult to assess what impact it may have had.

Churchill went on a tour of the country
in late June, and was generally received with warm applause. However, on
one occasion he was booed by a large crowd in Walthamstow. Overall he was
popular, considered as a great man rather than as a politician. The Conservative
campaign slogans played on this: 'Help Him finish the job'. Indeed it has
been suggested that many people who voted Labour did not fully realise
that that meant voting against Churchill: they either somehow expected
he would still be there in a coalition or had not fully taken in the implications.

However Churchill's priorities in his election
campaign were not the same as the people's, as Paul Addison points out
convincingly (p. 267).

He spoke, on 13 June, of five tasks: completing
the war with Japan, demobilization, restarting industry, rebuilding exports,
and a four-year plan of 'food, work and homes'. Yet homes, which came last
on Churchill's list, consistently came first on the list of voters' expectations:
homes, jobs, social security and nationalisation.

Labour was much closer, putting the material
needs of the people higher on its list of priorities.

Results:

Labour won a landslide victory: with 393
seats (1935, 154) to the Conservatives' 213 (1935 432). The Liberals won
only 12 seats (1935 20). The CPGB won 2 seats, Common Wealth 1.

In terms of percentage of votes cast, Labour's
victory was less overwhelming:

Con 39.8, Lab 47.8, Lib 9 (1935 Con 53.7,
Lab 37.9, Lib 6.4)

The service vote, between one and three-quarter
and two million votes, was predominantly Labour (though there are no official
statistics for this, merely informed hearsay)

There had been indications which, in retrospect,
show that the Labour victory was fairly predictable: B.I.P.O., ther British
Institute for Political Observation (?) made regular surveys during the
war, and these pointed to a consistent Labour lead. Polls from 1943 to
the end of the coalition illustrate this very clearly:

Voting intention in %

Con

Lab

Lib

June 1943

31

38

9

July 1943

27

39

9

December 1943

27

40

10

February 1944

23

37

10

February 1945

24

42

11

April 1945

24

40

12

(table from The Road to 1945)

Churchill, however, was not aware of these
until after the war. However, Gallup also conducted regular polls, but
Churchill and others did not pay much attention to them.

There were also a number of by-elections
during the war. The Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties had entered
into an electoral truce at the beginning of the war, according to which
they would not contest by-elections, thus ensuring the seat remained under
the same party, but this did not prevent other parties and independent
canddates from challenging the coalition party candidate. In the by-elections
which took place, results clearly suggest a move towards the Left.

It will be noticed that most of the seats
which changed hands during the war at by-elections were Conservative losses,
and Labour's only loss was to a Nationalist candidate. However the significance
of these results was not widely accepted at the time: Attlee tended to
dismiss them as the somewhat unrepresentative protest vote which by-elections
sometimes attract.

With hindsight it is apparent that the
opinion polls and the by-election results (and see The Road to 1945 for
a fine analysis of the swing in significant by-elections) both pointed
to a shift to the Left and a Labour victory.

Labour in Power

Put very briefly, the Labour government did introduce the National Health
Service, it did nationalise the industries it said it would (with some
difficulty as regards iron and steel), it did carry out the provisions
of the 1944 Education Act (the 'Butler Act') and it did ensure full employment.
Ironically, in view of the priorities mentioned above, it was in housing
that Labour's achievements failed to meet the targets they had set, though
Bevan's insistence on quality in Council housing meant that the houses
built during that period have lasted (and have often been among the more
attractive council properties bought by their tenants under Margaret Thatcher's
"privatisation" of so many council houses and flats. Numbers
of houses built were below targets, for all sorts of reasons, including
difficulty in mobilising raw materials and manpower.

Indeed Kenneth Morgan has suggested that the Labour government of 1945-1951
took the very dangerous course of keeping practically all its election
promises: which meant that it had to look further at what to do next. This
led to disagreements within the party: some, like Bevan, wanted more nationalisations
(he wanted to nationalise "the commanding heights" of the economy,
though not of course every company, corner shop and so on in the country),
while others, like Morrison, wanted to "consolidate". This debate
highlighted no doubt the ideological differences within the Labour party.
Until Labour had achieved the very real advances it did achieve in the
second half of the 1940's, there was agreement between those who wanted
to nationalise the major infrastructural industires and no more, and those
who wanted a fully socialist Britain with a much larger proportion of the
national economy taken into public ownership. The former had a limited
"shopping list" of sectors to be nationalised, while the latter
was quite ready to start with that list before going further. Until all
the items on the shopping list had been ticked there was agreement; but
beyond that there were divided views.

It is tempting to wonder what would have happened if the Conservatives
had been elected in 1945 under Winston Churchill, and not Labour under
Clement Attlee. There is little doubt that there would have been some legislation
to implement Churchill's promise of protection "from the cradle to
the grave", but it is likely that other priorities would have meant
that resources for "social security" would have been smaller.
The Conservatives might have done more to encourage exports, and perhaps
even to re-establish the ties within the Empire. It would also no doubt
have set up some kind of health service, but it is unlikely that it would
have been prepared to go as far as Bevan did in his struggle with the British
Medical Association. All of this is, however, pure speculation.

Post-war consensus vs. post-war settlement

Much has been made of the fact that when the Conservatives were returned
to power in 1951 they did not dismantle the "Welfare State" Labour
had put in place. The similar approach adopted by the Attlee's last Chancellor
of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell and the first Chancellor of Churchill's
1951 government, R.A. Butler has given rise to the term "Butskellism",
but this expression need not be taken at face value. Churchill's 1951 government
seemed intent on keeping the social peace, and it realised that the people
wanted the Welfare State. Attacking the Welfare State head on would have
been electoral suicide. It certainly does not mean that there were no differences
between Conservative and Labour policies, but rather that there was a "settlement",
in the sense that the Conservatives were ready to leave the Welfare State
alone if that was what the people really wanted.

These are NOTES, some of which may have been corrected orally, modified
during lectures and otherwise changed or improved. Please send me any comments
or queries you may have on this.